Breech Baby

It finally happened.  Something actually went wrong this pregnancy.  The baby is breech, that is, butt down.  There are no doctors these days that would do a full term vaginal delivery with a breech baby so I have limited options.

Here is the plan for the next week:

1. Do exercises to help encourage the baby to move back to vertex position by itself - inverted positions, abdominal massage, music down by the pelvis, swimming, headstands in the pool.  I'm not even kidding about these.

2. Get moxibustion - this is where an acupuncturist burns incense by my pinkie toe to get the baby to move head down.  This sounds a little crazy but there is research supporting that it works a statistically significant amount of time.

3. On Wednesday I will get an external cephalic version after work.  This is where I'm in the hospital, probably with an epidural in place, and they push on my abdomen from the outside to try to move the baby back into vertex (head down) position.  There are risks associated with this, and it may mean I need  a c-section directly after the attempt.

4. If any of these are successful, great!  I continue on like nothing's happened until I go into labor.  If they're not successful my goal would be to stay pregnant and continue these exercises/acupuncture until 40 or 41 weeks.  Then I will have a c-section unless the baby decides to flip on his/her own.



I have to say, I'm super disappointed.  I figured this all out a few hours ago.  The baby's movements had changed in the last 24 hours and so I palpated my belly to figure out if the head was still down.  I've been doing this for a few weeks now - it's called Leopold's maneuver and I do it on all my pregnant patients.  Today, the head didn't feel down.  It felt like it was sitting at the top of my uterus.  So I went over to the hospital and had the attending from my practice ultrasound me.  Sure enough, baby was butt down.

It's really disappointing to be planning not just a vaginal birth but an out of hospital vaginal birth and now be faced with a good likelihood that I'll need a c-section.

I've been crying a lot today.  Maybe crying will get the baby to turn!